PHIL NOBILE JR. wrote:I can’t quite get my head around just what flavor of 007 Tom Hiddleston would be tapped to deliver. Frankly, if anything, THAT’S what makes his casting an exciting prospect. Giving an audience what they expect is what led to the lazier entries of the franchise, and much like the craignotbond.com days of 2005, it seems Eon will be charting its own course.

I really hate to be that guy, but... meh. Meh, meh, meh.

I'll be the thst guy who agrees with you. It's going to be quite a jarring physical difference from Craig too.

Peven wrote:you're all wrong, the next movie will feature none other than Jane Bond played by Emilia Clarke

bah. casting women in traditionally male roles is so 2016. the next Bond should be Jamie Bond, the transgender 007. s/he will go to North Carolina and sort out the nefarious villains in the state government restricting access to bathrooms. they can call it Live and Let Pee.

BROOKS BARNES wrote:In particular, it is the steely-eyed Ms. Broccoli who runs the Bond franchise. She was the one who decided to recast the central character in 2005, giving the job to Mr. Craig, whom she had spotted in an indie drama called “Layer Cake.” She was the one who, with “Spectre” hanging in the balance after the on-set injury of Mr. Craig early this year, figured out how to keep the $300 million production on track.

Yes, a woman is in charge of the world’s most aspirational male brand.

The complicated Mr. Craig, 47, has professed a desire to move on before, but this time he seems to really mean it. (“I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists,” he told a British magazine in October when asked if he wanted to continue playing the character.) Moreover, the final scenes of “Spectre” seem designed to set up the departure of this particular 007, or at least close a chapter.

The Bond contract is also expiring for Sony Pictures Entertainment, which has distributed the last four movies. At least three studios — Sony, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox — are expected to battle for the right to take Bond into the future.

Still, Sony also finds itself at a crossroads. After enduring a battle with the activist investor Daniel S. Loeb and a devastating attack by hackers, the studio shook up its movie division this year, bringing in a new movie chairman, Thomas E. Rothman, who has a track record of financial discipline. Sony can’t exactly back up a Brink’s truck to keep Bond while preaching austerity to the rest of Hollywood.

And the expiring deal is lavish, requiring Sony to pay 50 percent of the “Spectre” production costs — which total some $250 million after accounting for government incentives — for only 25 percent of certain profits, once costs are recouped. Sony also shoulders tens of millions of dollars in marketing costs.

In an email stolen by hackers and widely published online, Andrew Gumpert, who oversees business affairs for Sony, figured that the studio would realize about $38 million in profit if “Spectre” performed as “Skyfall” did. (Sony earned about $57 million from “Skyfall,” which was less expensive to make, while MGM collected roughly $175 million and Eon’s share amounted to $109 million.)

There is one other factor working against Sony. Mr. Lynton this year pushed out the studio’s longtime movie chief, Amy Pascal, and she was the Sony executive with the strongest relationship with Ms. Broccoli. Was Ms. Broccoli upset by Ms. Pascal’s exit?

“Yes,” she said. “Amy has been a big part of the success of these movies, and we adore her.” Asked which Sony executive they are closest to now, Ms. Broccoli and Mr. Wilson struggled for an answer. Ms. Broccoli ultimately offered that Josh Greenstein, Sony’s relatively new head of marketing, “does fantastic work.”

Since there are no more Fleming books to adapt outright, each new Bond movie starts with Ms. Broccoli and Mr. Wilson rereading the old novels, they said. “We really like to kind of saturate ourselves in the world he created,” she said. Then, working in their stately London offices near the Hyde Park end of Piccadilly, they try to channel the fears and insecurities of the global moviegoing audience.

“We think, ‘What is the world afraid of? Where are we headed?’ Then we try to create a villain that is the physical embodiment of that fear,” Mr. Wilson said. With “Spectre,” they zeroed in on government surveillance.

BROOKS BARNES wrote:LOS ANGELES — A five-studio tug of war has broken out over James Bond.

For more than a decade, starting with “Casino Royale” in 2006, the superspy series has been based at Sony Pictures Entertainment. It has been a period of stability and prosperity for 007, as global ticket sales reached new heights. The four Bond films that Sony has released collected $3.5 billion at the worldwide box office, after adjusting for inflation.

But Sony’s contract to market and distribute the films expired in 2015 with “Spectre.” So the two companies that control the franchise but do not distribute their own films — Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the family-run Eon Productions — have started attending dog and pony shows put on by studios that want the rights, according to five people briefed on the sessions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

On Tuesday, for instance, leaders at Sony spent an hour making their case. Kazuo Hirai, the chief executive, helped give the pitch, which emphasized the studio’s deep knowledge of Bond and its ideas for expanding the franchise’s reach. In true Hollywood fashion, Sony gave its presentation inside a sound stage on a recreated set from “Dr. No,” which was released in the United States in 1963 by United Artists and laid the foundation for the entire series.

Also vying for the Bond deal — even though it pays surprisingly little — are Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Annapurna, an ambitious upstart financed and led by the Oracle heiress Megan Ellison. (Not competing for the business are Paramount, which has been struggling and recently hired a new chairman, and Walt Disney Studios, which has been on a box office hot streak by focusing on its own family film labels.)

MGM and Eon, which stands for Everything or Nothing, are only offering a one-film contract. The expired Sony deal was for four movies. MGM, which is owned by private equity firms, including Anchorage Capital Partners, probably wants to keep its options open as it considers a sale or public offering.

Casting for the franchise has not been discussed in the meetings, according to the people briefed on them, although producers hope Daniel Craig will play the lead for at least one more chapter. He has a gap on his docket, according to movie industry databases, that would allow for filming.

Representatives for MGM, Eon and the studios pursuing the rights either had no comment or did not return calls.

The eagerness to land Bond underscores the continuing strength of the series but also the realities of the modern movie business. As competition for leisure time increases, studios have focused more intently on global blockbusters, and those are in short supply. In some ways, the Bond series was the first to go after a worldwide audience.

Yet the deal that studios are hotly chasing is not very profitable.

Under its previous agreement, Sony paid 50 percent of the production costs for “Spectre” — which totaled some $250 million after accounting for government incentives — but received only 25 percent of certain profits, once costs were recouped. Sony also shouldered tens of millions of dollars in marketing and had to give MGM a piece of the profit from non-Bond films Sony had in its own pipeline, including “22 Jump Street.”

In a 2014 email stolen by hackers and widely published online, Andrew Gumpert, who then oversaw business affairs for Sony, figured that the studio would realize about $38 million in profit if “Spectre” performed as “Skyfall” did. And “Spectre” did not, taking in $881 million, about 20 percent less than “Skyfall,” which was released in 2012.

Why, then, do studios want to distribute Bond so badly? Bragging rights, mostly. Having a Bond movie on the schedule guarantees at least one hit in a business where there is almost no sure thing.

Bond is gargantuan: The 25 movies have taken in nearly $6 billion at the North American box office, after adjusting for inflation, according to Box Office Mojo. The series has generated billions more in overseas ticket sales, home entertainment revenue, television reruns, marketing partnerships (Omega watches, Aston Martin cars, Gillette razors) and video games.

For at least one suitor, Annapurna, landing Bond would be transformative. Ms. Ellison started by focusing on prestige films like “Her” and “American Hustle.” But she has been diversifying toward more commercial movies like the animated hit “Sausage Party” and recently hired a senior 20th Century Fox executive to serve as president of her company. Last month, Annapurna signed an unrelated distribution deal with MGM.

The person Ms. Ellison and the other bidders need to impress the most is Barbara Broccoli, who runs Eon Productions. Moviemaking is a collaborative process, but Ms. Broccoli and her older half brother, Michael G. Wilson, have final say over every line of dialogue, casting decision, stunt sequence, marketing tie-in, TV ad, poster and billboard.

A version of this article appears in print on April 21, 2017, on Page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Diamonds Are Forever? To Studios Vying for Rights, So Is James Bond. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Aaron Couch & Borys Kit wrote:Daniel Craig is not included in the announcement for the Nov. 8, 2019, film.007 will be back in 2019.

The next installment in the James Bond franchise has set a release date of Nov. 8, 2019. This will be the 25th installment in the long-running series.

Daniel Craig, who has held a license to kill since first playing Bond in 2006's Casino Royale, has not been announced as being back as the British Secret Service agent, with EON Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer saying casting will be announced at a later date. A director has also not been revealed (Sam Mendes helmed the previous two installments).

The script is coming from Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who worked on Craig's four Bond films: Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall and Spectre.

While the date is set, many other things about Bond 25 remain unclear. MGM and EON have no U.S. studio partner on the movie and are in secret talks with several contenders after its four-picture deal with Sony expired with Spectre. Sources say Sony and Warner Bros. are vying for the rights.

It is also unclear whether Craig will return. The actor has spoken disdainfully about continuing as Bond in the past, but more recent rumors have painted a more softened tone from the actor. Among the stars who have been seen as waiting in the wings to take on the role should Craig retire include Idris Elba, Tim Hiddleston, Damien Lewis, Tom Hardy and The Hobbit actor Aidan Turner.

The franchise has been very successful with Craig in the starring role. 2012's Skyfall earned $1.1 billion, while 2015's Spectre earned $880 million.

Bond 25 will be produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. It is set to open the same day as an untitled Disney fairy tale movie.

Mike Fleming Jr wrote:EXCLUSIVE:James Bond has a release date for his next film, and he will soon have a director. We’ve known for months that Daniel Craig was going to return and finish his run as 007 with the one film commitment he has left on his deal, so that is hardly a surprise. While there has been published speculation about Dunkirk‘s Christopher Nolan and Baby Driver‘s Edgar Wright possibly surfacing as each did the press tour on those hit films, I’m hearing that the three frontrunners to direct the next James Bond movie are Yann Demange, Denis Villeneuve and David Mackenzie. Demange directed ’71, an electric 2014 thriller that starred Jack O’Connell as a British soldier left behind the lines in Northern Ireland after dark, who struggles to get safe. He is currently directing White Boy Rick, with Matthew McConaughey leading the ensemble.Villeneuve is coming off the Best Picture nominee Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, the Alcon sequel which will be released by Warner Bros October 6. Mackenzie directed Best Picture nominee Hell or High Water, and he signed on to direct Outlaw King, the story of Scottish king Robert the Bruce, which most know from Braveheart. These are top of the food chain filmmakers, all. As for Nolan and Wright, each has shown some exuberance about Bond duty, but the likelier scenario is they would take over the franchise down the line when it is inevitably rebooted and they can start from scratch.Villeneuve might have a scheduling conflict — he’s making Dune for Legendary — which might give a slight edge to Demange. The three frontrunners have all had meetings, I am told.

EON ‘s Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli and MGM still haven’t set a distributor for the film, but there is plenty of time for that. Longtime home Sony, Warner Bros, Annapurna, Fox and Universal are all pursuing distribution rights to the franchise. But the producers and MGM did just set the Bond 25 movie for November 8, 2019, with a traditional earlier release in the UK and rest of the world. That means they will have to select a filmmaker quickly and I expect that to be completed by end of summer. Bond 25 will be written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who penned Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace, Skyfall and Spectre.

Guy Martin wrote:Now that Bond, in the form of Daniel Craig, is back, and 'Bond 25' is slated to be hitting our screens at some point in the next year and a half, an unforeseen problem has cropped up for the Broccolis, Eon Productions, and not least, for the veteran scriptwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. Purvis and Wade have for the last 17 years, since 1999's The World is Not Enough, been among the chief architects of the Craig-Bond scripts. For the last two Sam Mendes outings, Skyfall and Spectre, British playwrights John Logan and Jez Butterworth have also been on call.

The problem is one of villains. By definition, every Bond film has to be a war between Bond and the dark-side forces that will bring down, or dominate, the world, as incorporated by a diabolically smart, be-fanged raving maniac. In short, Bond desperately needs Christoph Waltz' reincarnation of Ernst Stavro 'Goldfinger' Blofeld. It was difficult enough for the longest-running franchise in film history to deal with the collapse of the former Soviet Union and its bloc in the 1990s, especially since Ian Fleming's entire premise for the Bond books was based on a Cold-War-enemies world view. Since then, Purvis, Wade, Craig, and their directors have managed to invest the series with new purpose, and have given us a host of rogue stateless villains who have admirably filled the crucial role of Bond's serial opponents. In this regard, the revelation in an interview by Waltz that he will not re-incarnate Ernst Stavro 'Goldfinger' Blofeld in Bond 25 is especially unwelcome news. Perhaps it's like that masterful game of footsie that Craig played for a year and a half with the press before doing the about-face and coming home to us on Colbert a few weeks ago? Unfortunately, Waltz sounded serious.

But the loss of Waltz, if it proves true, pales beside the conundrum that Purvis and Wade admit they, or anybody, will face with this next script. The problem with the next set of Bond villains, apparently, is that reality has outstripped anything that the writers might like to dream up. In other words, the writers of the last few groundbreaking Bonds, the shipwrights who have essentially righted the keel of the Good Ship Bond for the last two decades are admitting that the world is too much with them, and that they need to give the whole of modern villainy a re-think.

Here's what Purvis said about it at the top of this year: "I'm just not sure how you would go about writing a James Bond film now. Each time, you've got to say something about Bond's place in the world, which is Britain's place in the world. But things are moving so quickly now, that becomes tricky. With people like Trump, the Bond villain has become a reality. So when they do another one, it will be interesting to see how they deal with the fact that the world has become a fantasy."

In fairness, it isn't just the high- and low-comedy of the current American executive branch that is the problem. It is the totality of Europe coming apart at the seams, the re-re-ascendance of Russian power, and not least, the wriggly Kim Jong-Un factor. Of all current world leaders astride the stage, Jong-Un arguably most personifies an Austin Powers satire of a Bond villain, what with his random nuclear tests in the mountains and giggly semi-functional rocket ejaculations over Japan. Purvis' question, in other words, is real in this regard: How does one fashion a believable Bond villain when villainy itself has been overtaken by a real world whose cartoon-ish actors have superseded satire?

It's a cinematic storytelling challenge not previously faced by any of the previous twenty-four Bonds, and we can only hope that the boys are hard at work on it now. But with Jong-Un and others dancing their mad jig in the headlines, they've got a hell of a job in front of them.